Author Gail Gauthier's Reflections On Children's Books, Writing, And The World of Children's Publishing

Monday, October 29, 2007

Gail Leaves The Office, Part II

Lunch!: On Saturday while at the Rabbit Hill Festival, I met Susan Thomsen of Chicken Spaghetti. Susan had to cut out after the morning panel discussion but she knows a large portion of the Connecticut population, and before she left, she introduced me to Sari Bodi who then invited me to have lunch with her and her writing group who were attending the festival.

These women blew me away. They are so much more sophisticated about their work than I was at the same point in my career. (Quite honestly, they are more sophisticated than I am now.) These women study writing with a published author, their writing group meets every week (I've been a writing group member a couple of times--every week seems like a big chunk of time to me), and some of them take writing classes in New York City. One woman sitting at our table goes into New York City every week to meet with her writing group.

In my part of Connecticut, it's generally believed that getting into New York City requires a passport. When I was living in Vermont, we knew it couldn't be done without a spaceship.

Oh, and one of those writers has met Fusein the flesh, not in that pretend, alternative world way that I've sort of met her. I feel very cool now, because I ate lunch with someone who has met Fuse.

What did we talk about at that lunch? Why, we talked about bloggers! For a few minutes there I was the center of attention because I could name names of blogs.

One person at the table asked what I thought was a good question. She wanted to know if there were any kidlit blogs that dealt with writing process. That interested me because for the last four or five months I've been trying to test out writers' blogs looking for that kind of information. Because I'm so haphazard about nearly everything I do, I don't have a good list of writing process blogs, but it seems as if it would be a good idea for someone to pull one together.

5 comments:

Hi Gail! I've been following the yahoo group via email since the Chicago conference, and I've read your posts but haven't put up any of my own yet. Anyway, nice to find your blog! In response to the question about writing process, I did recently put up a "blog" in addition to my main blog (which sometimes deals with process) which is essentially a series of "process" essays -- it's www.notforrobts.blogspot.com. When i'm finished with my current book I want to do more with it, especially author interviews. In the meantime, it's static, but possibly useful to some. Cheers!

About Me

I'm the author of eight books for children and young adults, all published by G.P. Putnam's Sons. I've republished Saving the Planet & Stuff as an eBook. Now I have experience wading in both the traditional and self-publishing pools. My essays have been published at The Millions and Literary Mama, and my short stories at Alimentum and Cricket. I have been blogging at Original Content for eleven years.